City stops sex doll brothel from opening in Toronto

TORONTO, August 30, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — The City of Toronto has closed what claimed to be North America’s first known sex doll brothel a week before it was set to open.

Aura Dolls planned to open September 8 in a strip mall in the city’s North York area with a choice of six silicone sex dolls for rent 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But after Councillor John Filion pointed to a bylaw he introduced two decades ago that restricts “adult entertainment parlours” in North York to industrial areas, city officials ruled Aura Dolls was illegal, City News reported.

“Both the business owner and property owner were advised by city staff that the proposed use is illegal and that, if the business opened, they would be charged,” Filion wrote in a letter to residents.

“As a result, I am pleased to advise you that city staff were told that the lease has been cancelled.”

“Thanks to all who spoke up for our community,” Filion tweeted Thursday.

“I received many emails, and one from a young female student concerned about the objectification of women wrote that such businesses ‘wrongly educate men that women are plastic dolls, rather than human beings who exist for male pleasure.’”

Fillion also tweeted that he hoped the building owner would get rid of two other illegal businesses in the strip mall, a cannabis dispensary store and massage parlour.

The City of Toronto issues business licences for strip clubs, sex retail stores and massage parlours, which are generally subject to zoning bylaws, City News reported.

Aura Dolls’ website currently lists its address as “announced upon booking.”

Meanwhile, the owner of Kinky S Dolls, which opened in May 2017 about three miles west of Aura Dolls’ planned location, claims his is the first sex doll brothel, the Toronto Sun reported.

Gavriel Yuval has some 500 male clients who rent a silicone doll, and can opt to buy one, he told the Sun. He has a business licence to run the operation as a sex paraphernalia shop.

“Some people spend $3,000 or $4,000 on a doll and don’t know what to expect,” he said. “So we offer ‘Rent from us and if you like it, you buy from us. You can store what you buy here.’”

Proponents of sex dolls claim they give men a harmless way to act on violent or deviant sexual desires — with some endorsing the use of sex dolls of children by pedophiles, noted Jonathan Van Maren.

But using sex dolls only creates, inflames and strengthen such desires, as has been shown to be the case with those who use violent pornography, he warns.

People with deviant sexual desires could, possibly for the first time, experience those desires fulfilled in a physical and sensory way, albeit with a non-human ‘outlet,’” he wrote for LifeSiteNews.

“The message is that these desires do not need to be suppressed — for 80 bucks, they can be experienced. After all, who is to say that any sexual desire is truly wrong in our relativist, sexually liberated culture?”

Just as pornography “objectifies and dehumanizes women while inflaming ugly desires that may have been previously dormant or even nonexistent,” noted Van Maren, “the sex doll phenomenon is simply one more step” down that road, “and a more dangerous one.”